Blowout by Rachel Maddow

Author:Rachel Maddow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2019-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

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Shell’s opportunities for new learnings about functioning in Arctic conditions had not been entirely extinguished at the end of that November, thanks to the Kulluk and its dedicated tugboat, the Aiviq. The Aiviq had by then hauled the Kulluk through the Slushee-like Beaufort Sea and back into manageable water near Dutch Harbor. Shell had the option of shoveling the snowdrifts from the Kulluk’s deck and leaving the drillship parked safely at Dutch Harbor (its anchor system was far superior to the Disco’s, and it had a customized rounded berth) until the new season opened up next summer. But the company was anxious to get the Kulluk back to Seattle for a couple reasons. First, the Arctic battering had left the ship in need of the expert ministrations of Vigor Marine. Second, Shell executives were hoping to outrun an oil-facilities tax levy from the State of Alaska. Shell was under the impression that if the Kulluk remained in the state past January 1, it would owe about $6 million to Alaska. “It’s fair to say the current tax structure related to vessels of this type influenced the timing of our departure,” a Shell spokesman wrote in an email to a local reporter in Dutch Harbor.

And so, the decision was made in early December to execute the two-thousand-mile trip back to Washington State before the Kulluk would turn around and come back up to try Alaska again next season. The trip would become one of the most documented sea voyages of the twenty-first century. The Department of the Interior, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Transportation Safety Board all investigated and weighed in with reports. The combined page count of the government reports and their investigation notebooks neared, if not exceeded, that of Moby-Dick. McKenzie Funk wrote a riveting ninety-two-hundred-word piece for The New York Times Magazine that detailed, among lots of other things, the weight of the eighteen crew members chosen to ride the Kulluk back to Seattle. (The smallest was about 235; many tipped the scales at over 300.) Observant marine and offshore drilling professionals called the voyage “a shambolic misadventure” and a “clown circus.” Many, many new learnings were revealed.

There were things that should have given Shell pause about embarking on the towing operation in the first place. Shell’s preferred marine-warranty survey company would not sign off on the tow plan. Too risky in an Arctic winter. So in order to keep its insurance in force, Shell had to scramble to get a different company to sign off, which the new company did, after a hasty and incomplete inspection of the Aiviq, the Kulluk, and the (always excellent) paperwork. The surveyor assigned to the inspection “did not conduct an independent assessment concerning the overall adequacy of the towing equipment,” the Coast Guard report noted. “He stated that conducting this type of analysis was not in his scope of work as a warranty surveyor.” Add to this that Shell did not send its tow plan to a single federal or state agency for review.

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